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The meaning of CID in output of kernel debugger commands

Recently someone asked me what was the real meaning of the ‘Cid’ field which appears in the output of commands such as !process and !thread in the kernel debugger (kd). Though from a practical perspective I was aware that these represent the Process ID Read More...
Posted Friday, October 30, 2009 5:26 AM by arvindsh | 0 Comments

Quick Tip: vfbasics!_AVRF_EXCEPTION_LOG_ENTRY symbol not resolved?

I was debugging some issues with the help of Application Verifier and WinDbg. Since I was onsite I did not have any access to Microsoft’s private symbol servers, so I was using the public symbol server ( http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols ). On Read More...
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 11:17 AM by arvindsh | 0 Comments

RESOURCE GOVERNOR: Difference between MAX_MEMORY_PERCENT and REQUEST_MAX_MEMORY_GRANT_PERCENT settings

Resource governor is a useful feature in SQL Server 2008 which can provide instance-level throttling of CPU and memory resources. I will not dwell into the basic details and architecture, as they are very well documented in Books Online and also in the Read More...
Posted Sunday, July 26, 2009 8:42 AM by arvindsh | 0 Comments

t-SQL Anti-Pattern: Index Key Order and Query Expression Order

This is really not a T-SQL anti-pattern as much as it is a database design issue, but we see it so often that it’s worthwhile bringing it up and clarifying things. For illustrating the scenario, let’s examine the table Person.Contact in the AdventureWorks Read More...
Posted Monday, July 06, 2009 12:52 PM by arvindsh | 0 Comments
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Tip of the day: "An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format" .NET P/INVOKE issue

The other day I was using a 3rd party utility which was built on the .NET platform. My primary work computer happens to be a x64 installation. So on this computer when I fired the utility up, and tried to perform some tasks it would error with a .NET Read More...
Posted Sunday, June 21, 2009 5:20 AM by arvindsh | 2 Comments

VISUAL STUDIO REMOTE DEBUGGER HISTORY

Let's say you use the Visual Studio Remote Debugger extensively, and with a wide variety of remote targets. Very quickly the list of qualifiers (see the image below to understand what I refer to) can grow quickly with 'noise' items. If you were curious Read More...
Posted Saturday, May 23, 2009 1:52 PM by arvindsh | 1 Comments

Rolling upgrade of 1 instance from 2-node, 2-instance sql failover cluster to slipstreamed sql 2008 SP1

Now that SQL Server 2008 SP1 is released (download link here ), it is time to test a very interesting capability: Service Pack slipstreaming. That means that you can save some time by doing an 'integrated' installation of SQL 2008 which includes the SP1 Read More...
Posted Saturday, April 11, 2009 1:00 PM by arvindsh | 1 Comments

Debugging Toolbox

This one is a quickie for an easy reference to most commonly used debugging tools and links. I hope you find it useful, and kindly indicate your feedback on this page by using the comments section or by rating the post! Debugging Toolbox Tool Key Usage Read More...
Posted Friday, January 30, 2009 7:51 PM by arvindsh | 3 Comments

SQL Server 2000 / 2005 Failover Cluster Pre-installation Checklist

Here's a quick checklist before you install an instance of SQL Server on a failover cluster; or any service pack or hotfix for an instance. Following this list should eliminate 90% of the most common causes of setup failure. Please note that this checklist Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 03, 2009 6:12 AM by arvindsh | 4 Comments

Some notes on database snapshots

Overview I recently conducted some tests to double check the exact behavior of database snapshots when: Snapshots are created on volumes which are much smaller than the actual database size Metadata-only operations such as DROP TABLE are executed DDL Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 31, 2008 7:29 AM by arvindsh | 1 Comments
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Howto: Have a Clustered instance of SQL Server listen on multiple virtual IP addresses

Recently a colleague asked me if there were any changes specific to Windows Server 2008 which allow SQL Server (clustered instance) to listen on multiple subnets. There was only one change in Windows 2008 to my knowledge (which I have detailed in this Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 30, 2008 11:03 AM by arvindsh | 0 Comments

Concurrency of Full, Differential and Log backups on the same database

Overview Many a time, we are asked by customers about the effect of overlapping backup schedules: for example, whether they can backup the transaction log at the same time that a long-running complete backup of the database is taking place. Books Online Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 30, 2008 9:44 AM by arvindsh | 1 Comments

SQL Server setup log locations and more

In order to efficiently troubleshoot problems involving failed setup, we need to use the setup logs. Once you know where the log files are located, you can start troubleshooting. What to look for in the log files is a separate topic in itself, but at Read More...
Posted Monday, December 22, 2008 11:40 AM by arvindsh | 1 Comments
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Windows, SQL Server and Multi-Core / Hyper-Threading

Very often we get asked a question about 'how many processors does my SQL Server 200x Edition really support'. This post hopes to summarize the considerations and actual limits. SQL Licensing is per socket First, let's take a look at the Books Online Read More...
Posted Friday, December 19, 2008 7:27 AM by arvindsh | 3 Comments
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T-SQL Anti-pattern of the day: 'all-in-one' queries

Scenario A common requirement for enquiry queries on an OLTP database is to have search criteria which are very specific ('get me details for for OrderID = NNNN') and also the occasional reports which ask for all the orders ('get me all the orders, no Read More...
Posted Friday, December 19, 2008 5:29 AM by arvindsh | 7 Comments
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